Summary

KDE is currently missing a way to easily configure a touchpad for advanced options such as scroll area or disabling touchpad while typing.

KDE should have a KControl module for configuring this. This used to be provided by the QSynaptics package, which is no longer maintained and is only for KDE/Qt 3.X.

Release Note

A new touchpad configuration modules is available and installed by default, allowing the end-user to tweak their laptop touchpad and modify advanced settings like multi-touch, disable while typing, etc.

Rationale

For most users, the default Xinput settings for their touchpad will be adequate. However, there are cases where advanced settings would be beneficial to tweak how their touchpad behaves. This becomes especially important for features such as multi-touch or multi-tap, defining scroll areas, setting sensitivity, etc. Some laptops also have misbehaving touchpads, that are too sensitive with their default settings (e.g. Dell Mini 10v). Allowing the user an easy way to adjust these settings will result in a better overall user experience.

User stories

jr finds that while typing, his hands sometimes accidentally activate the touchpad, causing erroneous clicks or mouse movement. jr wishes there was a way to set the 'disable while typing' feature available in his touchpad to prevent this.

Roman has a very small touchpad, and would like to disable the scrollbar area, as it impedes the available screen area used by the touchpad.

We will perform a usability review on the UI to ensure it covers the necessary features in a manor clear to the user. We will peer review the code to ensure it is of suitable quality for inclusion in main and likely to be accepted by upstream. We will work closely with the upstream developer to provide direction, support and assist in getting this upstreamed to KDE for 4.5.

Settings are saved across reboots, we will review the method that allows this to ensure it is reliable.

Test/Demo Plan

Verify features work on a variety of touchpads and that settings are saved/restored for each setting.